I'm going to sidestep the cultivar discussion and get back to lawn care in general. You do not need to aerate every year...or ever. You can if you want to, and sometimes there is a good reason to, but many high quality lawns are never aerated. Some lawns need more water to stay alive than others, but all lawns (with just a few exceptions that don't pertain to your situation) require about the same amount of water to look good and stay healthy. On a mature lawn fertilizer is not needed until May. If you fertilize in February or March (like the TV commercials will encourage you to do), that will encourage over growth of the grass once it comes out of winter dormancy. The grass will use up much more of the stored resources than it needs to use and, by May, leave the grass looking very weak. Normal grass will come out of winter dormancy with a vengeance. It will grow so fast you might need to mow 2x per week to keep it down. If you fertilize early you might need to mow it 3x to 4x per week. The point is it will be fine until May with no fertilizer. The reasons not to seed in the spring are, as mentioned above, spring seeded grass is weak and often cannot take summer heat stress. By July the new grass will have died and been replaced by crabgrass. That is not the end of the world but it does seem like a waste of time, effort, and money. Also spring is the time when weed seeds, like crabgrass, are germinating. When you water 3x per day to germinate the new grass seed, the weed seeds love that and will germinate at the same time. The weeds are more aggressive and will dominate and crowd out the new grass seed. So fall is the best time to sow new cool weather seeds. Cool weather seeds can make it through a normal winter and toughen up the roots for the next summer; and the spring/summer weeds are not germinating in the fall. Here's something I put together a few years ago to help new lawn owners. Hope it helps you. Basics of Lawn Care After reading numerous books and magazines on lawn care, caring for lawns at nine houses in my life, and reading numerous forums where real people write in to discuss their successes and failures, I have decided to side with the real people and dispense with the book and magazine authors. I don't know what star their planet rotates around but it's not mine. With that in mind, here is the collected wisdom of the Internet savvy homeowners and lawn care professionals summarized in a few words. If you follow the advice here you will have conquered at least 50% of all lawn problems. Once you have these three elements mastered, then you can worry about weeds (if you have any), dog spots, and striping your lawn. But if you are not doing these three things, they will be the first three things suggested for you to correct. 1. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an inch in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. Do not spread this out and water for 10 minutes every day. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. If that does not work, then you might have to water more than once per week during the summer's hottest period. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. You will have to learn to judge when to water your own lawn. If you live in El Paso your watering will be different than if you live in Vermont. Adjust your watering to your type of grass, temperature, humidity, wind, and soil type. It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week. 2. Mowing Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush. 3. Fertilizing Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Follow the directions on the bag and do not overdo it (unless you use organics in which case you may overdo it without fear of hurting anything). At this point you do not have to worry about weed and feed products - remember at this point you are just trying to grow grass, not perfect it. Besides once you are doing these three things correctly, your weed problems should go away without herbicide.

Thank you to all who replied with support and advice! I had trouble with my original post and accidentally posted the same issue twice. The poor workmanship was done by people who should have been appropriately supervised and trained. If their work is poor (as is the case in my house and probably all other houses in the growing development), then it is the fault of the supervisors/inspectors/managers. If a finisher (or anybody else) is doing crappy work, it’s their supervisors’ responsibility to correct, educate or retrain them, and if these things can’t be done, then to fire them. The horrible state of my new house is 100% the respnsibility of the builder, not of any one individual actually doing the work. It is not a cheap house, so I wasn’t expecting those in charge to sign off on such shoddy workmanship. I’m currently in a house is the same area as the new disaster house that I moved into brand spanking new 1.5 years ago, with Zero significant problems. Same area, but a different builder. And a much cheaper house. With so many problems to fix, I’m not moving into the new house until they’ve completed the work. The good news is that I itemized everything, marked with blue tape, sent them the list and they showed up the next day with a team of 4 people to address all of the issues. One of them was a finisher who got to work immediately. I was prepared for a fight, but they seemed amenable to fixing just about everything. They said my list was by far the longest they had ever received. It took 3 hours to go through. In addition to the interior problems, there were leaking gutter, broken roof tile, broken fence, unsecured downspouts and air conditioner hose, holes on the stucco.... And yes, again, this is brand new construction. I did get a lot of “this is not a custom home,” “these are not custom cabinets,” and it turns out all of the trim is MDF (of course) and the method needed to get a good finish on nail holes isn’t something they’re willing to do. But I’ve been assured that the cracked tub, scratched stainless kitchen sink, scratched and marked master tub can all be patched/buffed to look perfect (look brand new? Lol) And they’re going to fix the carpets, fix the tile, fix the LVP...... holy S&!t there are so many things wrong with that house. And yes, I’m now *very* worried about what may be wrong with things that I can’t see behind the walls, and overall regret this purchase, but just have to move forward now.

Pitiful but may be ok. You are looking at it all wrong. It is not the lumber it is about if it is plumb and leveled esp at the windows. It is not about foundation bolt - it is about if any of them are missing more than 6' apart and and 2x at the corners. It is not about the OSB flooring, rather if OSB was glued and fastened properly.... Sheathing same way can not end in the air.

While you can include all costs of the pool and landscape into a construction loan, pool and landscape may have little effect on the appraisal. That translates into a higher down payment or cash out of pocket up front. For example: Land+Design+Permits+Construction for a project that appraises at around $1.2 mil also appraises around $1.2 mil. At 80% LTV (loan to value) the client can borrow $960K. (75% = $900K). When we add solar (a CA requirement Jan 1), pool and landscape for about $150K more, the appraisal if we're lucky, increases $50-100K, increasing the loan $40-80K at 80% LTV. The effective loan on the solar/pool/landscape is 25-50%. If the market is less robust, the appraisal won't be affected creating a higher cash out of pocket requirement for loan recording. If you can wait until completion of the home, you can often get an updated higher appraisal and fund these with less cash out of pocket.